British news outlet Dail Mail has said the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Rwanda asylum plan was ‘working’. Patel’s controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has attracted fierce criticism in UK as well as in Rwanda.
Daily Mail said that fearing getting sent to Rwanda, asylum seekers who initially wanted to stay in the UK are withdrawing their applications. The report mentions that 10 such applicants have withdrawn their applications.
‘It’s a positive start,’ an unnamed ‘Government source’ was quoted in the report as saying.
Meanwhile, officials in Kigali have said that first batch of asylum seekers from UK will arrive in the country “in the next few weeks”
According to the arrangement, the British government will send anyone entering the UK illegally, as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1, to Rwanda.
According to the Rwandan authorities, the British government will provide up to £120 million ($157 million, 144 million euros) to Kigali and migrants will be “integrated into communities across the country.”
The proposals to relocate tens of thousands of people in the coming years, which is set to be challenged in British courts, has been slammed by rights groups as “inhumane”.
Campaigners accuse President Paul Kagame’s government of crushing dissent and keeping an iron grip on power, but while announcing the asylum deal on April 14, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Rwanda was “one of the safest countries in the world.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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